Tag Archives: voting

Political Rants

We have met the enemy, and s/he is you know who

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We live in an age of miracles, my friend. Well … minor miracles, anyway. Just this week a neighbor’s cat who disappeared ten days ago turned up. That almost never happens. Then, of course, there are the elections. As always, it was a night of many disappointments and few surprises. Elections always give me heartburn, frankly.

The thing is, there are only a few institutions in modern society that are even nominally responsive to the public will. The most important of these is government. And while government has become increasingly unresponsive to the concerns of the people over the past few decades, that fact is partly a reflection of our lack of interest or participation.

Through a mirror darkly

The last thing I want to do is sound like the morning-after prognosticators on MSNBC. But I will say that complaining about Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema is something like displacement. Yes, they are tremendous assholes doing valuable service to capital. Yes, in the most proximate sense, it is their fault that we can’t have good things.

But, again, the Senate is a reflection of the voters, albeit in its very undemocratic way. If people are frustrated with the lack of progress in Congress, they need to work harder at getting progressives elected to the Senate. As a nation, we delivered a 50:50 split in that body, and you can see the result – we’ve basically empowered every senator to be a potential deal-breaker. The fact is, we need more votes … and we won’t get them until we organize more voters.

I wish I weren’t in Dixie

Of course, we’re dealing with some real challenges. We have a center-left party that is dysfunctional and shot through with corporate cash. In the other corner, we have a proto-autocratic party fueled by racism, misogyny, and other bad impulses. The clash between those two organizations was on full display this past Tuesday, particularly in Virginia.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that race-baiting still works in the heart of the old Confederacy. And as someone who knows the history of the PR industry, I also shouldn’t be surprised that propaganda is so effective. The thing they call “Critical Race Theory” is so vaguely defined that it could literally include anything. It’s just the most recent label the Republicans have slapped onto the perennial project of scaring white voters with stories about black people. So, not a departure.

Running the numbers

I haven’t seen the exit polling or any official results from the 2021 elections, but I have heard some comments from people who have. (I will try to dig into this data at some point soon.) From what I have heard, in Virginia, the Republican candidate for governor garnered about 80% of the votes that Trump received last year, while McAuliffe only received about 60% of the votes Biden got.

Since Youngkin only won by about 2%, this underlines the notion that the Virginia race was a turnout election. Republicans motivated their voters, while Democrats failed to do so sufficiently. The blame lies with the flat-footed candidate, but it is the citizens of Virginia who will pay the price for this failure, particularly the most vulnerable. That is what voters on the left need to bear in mind.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Vox populi.

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I’m going to open with a line from the late Trinidadian author and Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul (no leftist, btw): a million mutinies now! The primary election this past Tuesday in Georgia was an utter disaster, thanks to a republican-dominated political class dedicated to denying the vote to people of color and anyone else inclined to vote against the GOP. Once again, we’re seeing endless lines in predominately black districts, people waiting for three or more hours, standing in the rain, coping with dysfunctional machines and poorly trained poll workers. It’s a system designed to fail, and it did not disappoint. The combination of this chicanery and striking half a million people from the voter rolls was enough in 2018 to ensure Kemp’s election as governor, and it appears they have the pieces in place to game the November races as well.

The proximate reason for this meltdown was a precipitous replacement of all of the voting machines with new, touch-screen devices designed by a small company connected to the Governor’s campaign manager. Of course, they didn’t work properly. Poll workers were not properly trained on the devices, as they had only just been installed. Access keys were not working, so poll workers and voters were locked out of the machines. In many locations, provisional ballots were in short supply, so it’s likely that many thousands of people were disenfranchised, despite the court orders to keep the polls open beyond the designated closing time. In addition (or I should say, in subtraction), many polling locations had been eliminated prior to the vote, a decision that was not subject to prior review thanks to the Supreme Court’s striking down of the pre-clearance provision in Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (Shelby County v. Holder).

I’ve said this numerous times on this blog: when the Republicans win office, the first thing they do is try to lock the door behind them. With the presidency, the senate, many state legislatures and more than half of the nation’s governorships in their hands, they have been able to rewrite the rules, gerrymander the living shit out of districts, appoint hundreds and hundreds of reactionary judges, and basically stack the deck against progressive or even watery centrist challengers. On top of that, the President has been setting the predicate for crying fraud in the event he loses his re-elect this fall. That means the Democratic ticket, Biden presumably, needs to win big in order to overcome the shit-storm of challenges and heated rhetoric from the Trump camp. Because of the power dynamic between the two major parties (Republicans fanatically aggressive, Democrats a bit on the limp side), the GOP can afford to win narrow victories, like 2016. Democrats can’t. They need a blowout this November.

Can that happen? We shall see. Biden’s a bit fragile looking for a landslide, but hell … anything can happen. We know that, right? Til then, a million mutinies now!

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Decision point.

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This past week, the Supreme Court decided that undocumented immigrants don’t have the same fundamental rights as American citizens. That’s essentially what their decision in Jennings v. Rodriguez amounts to. People who cross into the country can be detained indefinitely, as they have been under the last four administrations, as per a narrow majority on the Court. (The opinion was written by George W. Bush appointee Samuel Alito.) It was a 5 to 3 decision, with Justice Kagan recusing herself, so for me the lesson of this – and other cases – is that elections matter and that people on the center-left need to start voting on the issue of the Supreme Court and who will garner a lifetime appointment to that august body.

Supreme Court: Not just a building.If Hillary Clinton had been elected president, she would have appointed someone relatively progressive to the Supreme Court to fill the seat currently held by Neil Gorsuch (illegitimately, in my view). That would likely have rendered a 4 to 4 split in the Rodriguez case, which would have allowed the lower court ruling in Rodriguez’s favor stand. This case makes a material difference in the lives of thousands upon thousands of human beings – individuals and families making the dangerous crossing into this country, seeking a marginally better existence than what they face back home.

This is not the only instance – there will be many more. The Friedrichs case in 2016 was another prime example of why we can’t sit on our hands, waiting for the perfect candidate. That was another 4 to 4 tie, allowing the lower court decision to stand, this time in favor of allowing unions to collect agency fees from non-member employees. Janus v. AFSCME, which is now before the court, addresses this same issue, and as a result of Trump’s election and appointment of Gorsuch, it is likely to go against the unions. That will likely commence a death spiral for public sector unions, undermining the last vestige of organized labor strength in this country. That’s a disaster for workers, and it’s effing because people couldn’t bring themselves to vote for someone they didn’t like (Clinton) in 2016 in order to save the effing Supreme Court.

It gets worse. Justice Kennedy is likely to step down before the end of Trump’s term. That likely means a permanent reactionary majority on the Court for decades to come. That said, it’s never too late to learn. So people: whatever else you do politically, vote to make a difference, not to express your identity. Push the Democratic party in a progressive direction through action, internal pressure, and primary campaigns, but do not forget what’s at stake when the general election arrives. Lives literally hang in the balance.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Least we can do.

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Matt wrote a song back in the, I don’t know, nineties called “Good Intentions” – I’m hoping to re-record it some day. Anyway, one of the lines went like this:

That son of a bitch with the backdrop and the gun
That son of a bitch with the gun
Well, I voted against, yes I voted against, yes I
voted against for all the poor
creatures of the world

Part of the reason why I’m thinking of this is the current Republican standoff over the Supreme Court vacancy … you know, their war against the U.S. Constitution which they claim so vehemently to revere. It is depressingly predictable that they would pull something like this, of course. Why not? We gave them power, after all; not by voting for them, perhaps, but by failing to vote against them. Matt was being sarcastic, of course, writing about people who think doing very little is doing enough. It certainly isn’t, but things like voting are the very least we can do, and they can make a difference. This is how.

Gotta vote, people. Just sayin.If back in 2014 more of us had said “Damn the torpedoes, I am going to vote against those fuckers if it takes me all day,” Obama would have been able to send a nominee through a normal Senate review process. If we had kept the Senate out of the hands of the wrecking crew known as the GOP, we would likely have pulled the Supreme Court back from the extreme right for the first time in more than thirty years. Now that opportunity is completely up in the air. We don’t know what’s going to happen in November, but I can tell you what isn’t going to happen before then: a Supreme Court confirmation vote, that’s what.

Elections have consequences, it bears remembering. Reagan’s victory in 1980 certainly did, as did Nixon’s in 1968 and 1972. We are living with the fallout from those electoral failures, just as we now live with that of our most recent mid-term rout. Turnout in 2014 was remarkably low – that’s the essential ingredient in any Republican victory on a national basis. When we stay home and sit on our hands, government at every level becomes more tightly controlled by the wrecking crew. Regardless of how little faith you may have in the institutions of government, that prospect simply cannot seem to you like a good thing.

No matter who wins the Democratic nomination, nor who is running for office in your state or your congressional district. No matter how long the lines or how many hoops you have to jump through. No matter what, vote against the mothers.

Next week: Ted and Donny’s super excellent war on terror.